Diversity of Bee Pollinators in Farming System of Karnataka

The bee pollinator decline has raised serious concerns on its impact on productivity of ecosystems. The information on Indian bees is so scanty. Little attempt has been made to understand the possible changes in bee pollinator diversity even at a local or regional scale. The task of compiling a faunal list of bees is challenging due to a virtual lack of taxonomic literature on south-Asian bees. There are also methodological problems of sampling and surveying for bees in different habitats. This study was therefore taken up as a pilot study to document the diversity of bees in a micro-landscape element of an Agro-farming system and to develop a simple method for assessing bee diversity.